As you may know, Hunter Biden isn’t someone many people would call a responsible gun owner. The President’s son is a well-known junkie and crackhead. As you probably also know, it’s illegal for someone with Biden-the-younger’s drug habits to buy and own a firearm. Not that legal niceties like that ever stopped him. Even the doddering President himself conceded last year that Hunter lied on a 4473 form when buying a handgun in 2018.
For those of you keeping score at home, that’s a federal felony. One that would land you or me in jail for a as much as a decade. Strangely, however, the federal law enforcement community has been unusually disinterested in prosecuting the President’s son. And no one in the legislative branch has pushed them on the matter.
But with the change in control of the House of Representatives, the FBI and the Justice Department are coming under far more scrutiny and pressure for decisions that seem to studiously avoid causing anyone with a last name of Biden any discomfort at all.
As Politico notes for non-TTAG readers . . .
The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits unlawful drug users from possessing firearms. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms says this ban applies to people who have admitted to using illegal drugs in the 12 months before buying a gun. Violators can receive up to 15 years in prison.
The accumulated alleged crimes of Hunter Biden have been the subject of a slow-walked federal investigation for a while now. But maybe things are finally starting to move forward because according to Politico, Hunter’s attorneys are attempting to play hardball with the feds, at least on the charge of lying on the 4473 and gun possession by a drug user.
They’re threatening — get this — to use the Bruen decision as a defense if their client is charged.
But the constitutionality of that law [banning gun ownership by drug users] — like many other provisions restricting gun ownership — is newly in question after a precedent-rocking decision the Supreme Court handed down almost a year ago.
[Hunter Biden’s] lawyers have already told Justice Department officials that, if their client is charged with the gun crime, they will challenge the law under the Second Amendment, according to a person familiar with the private discussions granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly. That could turn a case that is already fraught with political consequences into a high-profile showdown over the right to bear arms.
Of course you do. Millions of gun owners may soon have the son of the most anti-gun President in American history fighting in their corner.
If by some remote chance Biden-the-younger is actually charged by the Justice Department (don’t hold your breath), tens of millions of users of marijuana in states where it’s been legalized will have Hunter F-ing Biden arguing that under Bruen, the federal law banning gun sales and ownership by drug users is unconstitutional.
Biden’s lawyers aren’t stupid. They’ve surveyed the legal landscape and know that’s the direction things are going since the Supreme Court’s decision was handed down.
The Politico story goes on to document the cracks in the gun control wall that have developed in the post-Bruen world and note that even on the gun rights side, not everyone has come down (yet) on overturning the laws banning gun ownership by drug users. OK. Whatever.
In the mean time, you’ll have to forgive us while we enjoy the prospect of a torrent of schadenfreude that will overtake us and a lot of others on the pro-gun rights side if and when Hunter Biden’s attorneys challenge the constitutionality of the federal ban.
The hysterics that eventuality will cause — publicly visible or not — in the halls of Everytown, Giffords, Brady, the Demanding Moms and more could be the single best thing to come out of the Bruen ruling so far.
I’d be more surprised if he hadn’t had his finger on the trigger. Fukin idiot…
The black square censoring out Hunter’s pee pee is likely too big. The caption should be, “Come on, why won’t you pet my leg hair like grandpops?”
He had a gun in his hand, he even had a pistol, too…….
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:
) AND Great Luckiness.:
I most whole heartedly agree with your appraisal of your intellect and it obviously extends way beyond your knowledge of computers however I must question your “writing aptitudes”… Hopefully your “web get” and “Luckiness” will hold out long enough for you to earn enough money to keep you off of welfare and food stamps throughout your life… Bless your little heart…
Millions of gun owners may soon have the son of America’s most anti-gun President in history fighting in their corner.
Hope he is charged AND his lawyers prevail… No one with more than one active brain cell believes that Bribem JR would ever spend a minute behind bars as long “The Big Guy” is POTUS so we might as well get whatever WE can out of this…
The left is the undisputed king of paradoxical lessons once situations play out under the watch and backing with those who know and seek truth. This truly is amazing and, just like how this ridiculous brace rule places the NFA in jeopardy, it will undoubtedly bolster the 2A. Their own unraveling is priceless. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Cant argue with that universal law of physics.
Nothing will happen.
A second IRS whistleblower in the criminal investigation of first son Hunter Biden emerged Monday in documents sent to Congress following the purge of the entire investigatory team looking into President Biden’s son for tax fraud and related crimes.
The new whistleblower is a special agent in the IRS’s international tax and financial crimes group and worked on the Hunter Biden case since it was opened in 2018 — until he was ousted without explanation last week.
Both IRS whistleblowers expressed concerns internally for years about the case being swept under the rug but got nowhere, and they lay out extensive claims of retaliation in new disclosures to Congress.
Hunter, 53, allegedly failed to pay taxes on millions of dollars he received from foreign associates who in some instances interacted with then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Hunter wrote in communications retrieved from his abandoned laptop that he had to share “half” of his income with his father.
https://nypost.com/2023/05/22/second-hunter-biden-irs-whistleblower-emerges-after-five-years-on-case/
They will delay any Hunter investigations, and take people off the case if necessary. In the end, the Puppet will pardon him either way.
You should see how much money Dinesh D’souza makes off posting this hopium shit on Twitter.
The only thing more easily fleeced than a Lefty is a Righty. The major difference being that the Righties actually own the stuff they get fleeced out of, which is both sad and deliciously ironic at the same time.
hunter biden newest supporter of Gun Rights? Sounds like something bevis and butthead would fall for.
Lol, he’ll be Arkancided before that happens… Hunter didn’t kill himself. It’ll be an overdose… They’ll blame fentanyl and they’ll have to do “something” about the “crisis” and spin the sympathy vote from tards out there in ’24.
before we start buying up popcorn… let’s wait to see what happens. it would not be the first time “according to a person familiar with the private discussions granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly” came forth with stuff that turned out not to be true.
As noted earlier, if Hunter creates another crack in the wall of gun control, I will be happy to give him a pass on his infractions. Big win for one person, great big for 2A supporters.
Special Note: all the pro-2A organizations are actually benefiting the gun industry. To seriously (as in “actually”) support the rights of we the people, those organizations should stop nibbling the edges, and strike directly at NFA and GCA.
I’ve heard rumors that the .GOV is slow-rolling it so that the statute of limitations runs out, which is 5 years….
☝️That’s the plan.
makes sense. just ask our trolls.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-covid-19-pandemic-caused-massive-mental-illness-on-the-left/
Why would you think that he’s going to be charged with a gun crime?
After Alec Baldwin, I’d think you’d have started to realize the difference between the “anointed” and the plebs. They’re good people. We don’t punish good people. We punish bad people, like you because you disagree with the good people and that makes you bad. It places you into a “basket of deplorables” and once there, you’re “irredeemable”, remember?
That blacked-out area to make it safe for publication isn’t exactly ‘large’, if you know what I mean.
Embarrassingly small, actually… 🙂
If that was the case, shouldn’t he be toting an AR-15? According to the left, that’s the weapon-of-war of choice for the less than well-endowed.
It’s his executive branch (twig)
I’m going to start posting some of this stuff, as a working model of a final product in a different environment. They’ll appear somewhat randomly, but not entirely so. I’ll keep them as much as possible in political/policy stories, not gun or gear reviews. Also, I’ll try to keep it relatively “professional” but… there’s no way I’m not going to stick with that as a hard and fast rule. Also, these will be long but I’ll try to limit them to about 3 pages 11pt in a program like Word or LibreOffice. While you might lose formatting it might be better to try to read them in a program like that.
This is about what you might call “soft power” at several levels. I’ve seen objections that the outcomes require literal torture, they don’t at a societal level, though the people in charge often devolve to that for individuals because of reasons that Hayek pointed out involving a requirement of such a society to punish smaller and smaller deviations over time as a necessary precondition of maintaining power.
I’ll also state, flat out, that I’ve resisted collecting a bunch of this for years even when people here have asked me to. The reason is simple: This shit is really dangerous if you misuse it, and quite frankly, once you understand how it’s been used against you it would be unlikely that you’re not rather angry about it. Angry people with powerful tools are, in my experience, often not a good combination. From your marriage to the country, if misused this stuff is troublesome to say the least and if you mix what I’m saying with some of the Lefty toolkits I’m going to link to that could be a problem if you get all hot and bothered and go about being a jackass. To be clear; I rate this a far, far more dangerous than mixing drugs or alcohol with guns or heavy machinery. I’d rather give someone five hits of quality acid and a loaded M240 than give randos this information. But the Left’s already doing it and the hour is late so I’ll throw caution to the wind on that one.
And yeah, I have trust issues that, frankly, some of you guys don’t really do anything to alleviate in this regard.
The goal here is that, hopefully some number of the people who read it will start to understand it and begin to actually apply it and, not just that, teach it to other people. This, hopefully, can start to move the needle in a better direction. I’ll also say right off the bat that if your immediate reaction to this is “That’s bullshit” then you’re the one with a shitload of explaining to do as to how it is that you’re losing. Some will argue they’re not, later posts will make it very clear that you are, to use a sports analogy (ugh) down by 21 at the half. Denial is a hell of a drug, stop using it.
Winning is, overall, not out of the question but some serious work is needed and that while, to use a sportsball analogy, advancing the ball six inches on second down is better than taking a five yard loss, it’s not really contributing heavily to winning the overall game. Part of the way that these things work, at the macro scale, is to keep you myopically focused on something like a court case, a few pieces of legislation or even a single institution or general topic which is actually comparatively small to the entire game being played. Once you see how this works you’ll rapidly find that shifting priorities in a meaningful way is about as hard as literally walking and chewing gum at the same. This stuff’s not hard, it’s just not well known and if you were born after WWII, it’s been used against you for your entire life since Kindergarten.
[Example: For decades kids have been taught about Pavlov’s dogs. But consider the way the teaching occurs. It’s very specifically presented in a kind of superior manner, subtly suggesting that it works on dogs because they’re simple. This is untrue. The 3th grader learning this will shortly hear a bell and engage in a long series of complicated actions because of that bell. They’ve been classically conditioned to this far better than the dog was. This is also something that casinos play on because it works to make them tons of money over long periods of time. Skinner used this kind of thing, and patience, to produce nearly unbelievable results, like rats that would climb ladders and then dance across little highwires. And they’d do all of that for a single treat. Consider that and now realize that this works better on you than it does on rats, or dogs, for reasons I’ll cover later.]
This is a complicated topic and I’m going to try to avoid making it dry and academic while also keeping it from becoming so broad as to be essentially useless information or wandering off into the weeds to the point that the topic becomes confusing. I will also, generally, try to put working definitions in parenthesis as I think they’ll be needed. If you already know the terms, great, this is patronizing it’s for the benefit of those who don’t.
Those of you who are aware of James Lindsey will recognize reasonably rapidly that he and I are discussing two different parts of the same basic thing. His work focuses on a larger view, at an organizational level and above while I’m looking at a more personal and smaller group level which he mentions from time to time but never really delves into. While what he’s saying is mostly true the history of DEI or “woke” or whatever you want to call some of this stuff is less material to fighting it, IMHO, than understanding how it works. Understanding that Jiu Jitsu is a thing doesn’t give you a fucking clue how to see a kimura coming and avoid it, or use this situation to your own advantage.
Regardless, his work and this are both covering what you might call “interlocking fields of fire”, though I don’t think he’d use those exact words.
Once the tactics and functionality of these manipulative games are understood they are actually fairly easy to recognize and defeat. False dilemmas can be subverted via creating a third way, which is easy-peasy if you see the game being played. Emotional bait can be recognized for what it is and lose its functionality. If this happens on a reasonable scale, which is far smaller than most people would assume it to be, the Left in general will lose many of its most potent weapons, and more directly related to discussions hereabouts, so will the anti-gunners who are a subset of these people.
I’m going to try to break this up, basically, as follows. Ultra-basic concepts, basic human psychology/brain structure and basic human group psychology before moving into advertising as a segway to political and economic theory as well as some game theoretics involving incentive structures. Because yes, all of that’s being used against you. Hopefully, once this is accomplished, you’ll have a far better idea of how the antis function (and the larger group to which they belong which I’ll simply refer to as “totalitarians”) and knowing that is actually more than half the battle. I mean, it’s like G.I. Joe plus at least a third of Thundercats, minus Snarf because he’s annoying.
This post will start to introduce some extremely basic concepts within the interpersonal and group dynamics systems that the Left uses to manipulate people. But before that I will introduce some even more extremely basic principles which are part of how this is played upon. Later posts will get into more complex topics such as larger group dynamics, details on Pavlovian, Freudian or Jungian psychology specific definitions of key terms and how to recognize them. How to prepare your reactions to such games when you see them and identify them etc etc etc.
So, with all that nonsense out of the way, first, some extremely basic things to understand:
Manipulation is a tool. It’s neither good nor bad, it just is. You use it every day. When done for the benefit of the person being manipulated, we call this “education”. When done for the sole purpose of benefiting the manipulator we tend to take a dimmer view. As we should, since this is quite obviously abusable and the incentive structures are all backwards, which we instinctively detect. When done with reciprocity we tend to view it as a normal interaction.
Brains are, in many regards and most regards for the purposes under discussion here, pattern recognition devices that attempt to find patterns and extract meaning from those patterns.
Meaning, in this case being defined as “impetus for action based on observation”. This is going to lead, later on, to a discussion of heuristics (heuristics: mental shortcuts that may be instinctual or learned which provide a fast, though not always perfect, solution to a problem presented by an observed pattern).
Once created, functional patterns are hard-ish, but nowhere near impossible, to break. New heuristics can be developed shockingly fast, especially when properly presented.
People tend to believe that other people see the world the same basic way. People who deviate too far may often be labeled “crazy”. This is related to the previous two points, their behavior deviates from a known pattern to the point that, without investigation that rarely occurs, it appears to fall so far away from an established norm that it cannot possibly be correct.
For most people in most situations, significant deviations from previously understood patterns must fall into one of several categories to be considered worthy of significant investigation. This is the root of “frogs in a pot” and methods meant to “shift the Overton Window”. Many of the group methods used, once established, fall into the categories that the aforementioned James Lindsey covers.
Real power tends to prefer to hide. However, this is not a hard/fast rule and so some discernment is necessary. This discernment comes from understanding the smaller and larger tactics at work. Knowing that your business is instituting DEI for *some reasons* doesn’t help you fighting DEI’s establishment and the creation of what amount to commisars within your company. To be effective you’ll need to understand how and why they are establishing such an office. Which is what this is all about.
The hiding of power and/or true intention often falls into gaming the pattern recognition of enough people that those who see the truth can be castigated as outliers and “crazy” or “conspiracy theorists”. This makes it relatively easy to deal with dissenters who are marginalized before they even appear. This is applied by manipulative people at the personal level in abusing relationships and it’s very similar to the way that businesses and governments manipulate citizens.
Extremely importantly: Any individual usage of these tactics is based on study and statistics. It is very well understood that each move doesn’t work on everyone. It doesn’t have to. It works on enough people that over time the cumulative effect is in the favor of the manipulator. This is similar to the statistics employed by a casino. Over a long enough time period I don’t have to win all the time or even enough that you see a major difference. 50.1% winning on my end means over time I take everything and you keep thinking this is a game worth playing. This will come back to the concept of “flow” in learning. Keeping people in a false “flow” state is stupidly effective to keep them playing a game rigged against them.
Finally, humans all feel some level of emotion and this can be used to short circuit what is often called the “OODA Loop”. This is how an enormous amount of manipulation actually works at base and there are several variations on the tactic. While it is popular to say that “facts don’t care about feelings”, and this is true, the reverse is also true. Anger, fear, curiosity, anxiety are things that everyone feels. Even when some people may dysregulate these things, they feel them. Even psychopaths. Full blown alexithymia isn’t a lack of emotions, it’s improper control of them. This, ultimately is the root of the power of this sort of manipulation to sell everything from soap to cars to political platforms to “woke” bullshit.
There’s some more of this ultra basic stuff but I’ll probably come back to that after I jump up a level and discuss some basic brain-functionality that is gameable and being gamed via Freudian and Pavlovian insights.
Looking forward to the series, and thanks for taking the time to do so…
Also looking forward to this. I think you should do your own blog instead of posting it all in comments.
I don’t typically read every TTAG article or every comments section, and I assume others don’t either.
This is a test.
In many regards, this is only a test.
This is way too long.
He has a *lot* to cover, so some folks should just pass it over, I suppose. He’s not writing it for those with lower-than-average intellect.
I think you’ll be interested in how this all plays out, doc…
“This is way too long.”
True, if one comes here for an echo chamber of sloganeering.
OTH, I cannot read so much condensed text, without para breaks; it becomes must a blob. For important, or complex, information transfer, i would recommend/prefer AP style book format, rather than common “texting” style. strych9 does introduce excellent information.
This has paragraph structure. If you’re not seeing it you must be reading on a phone. These posts are edited for readability to the maximum ability allowed by this platform.
As I said in the original post on ultra-basic concepts, copy+paste into a text editor may be required for some people on some platforms or those with certain eyesight limitations.
“This is way too long.”
Then run back to your comic books and paste.
dacian ate all the paste his mommy forgot his lunch
Hmmm…Doc isn’t prone to unhelpful advice. And shutting him down with an insult will not encourage others to provide input. Nobody here is perfect, and you’re probably going to need input and maybe friends too, as you follow this new path.
I would reconsider.
And please; writing is not hard for anybody in these comment sections. OMG, can these people WRITE! Editing, on the other hand, is truly a hard-won skill, partly because it is far more difficult to remove any of the dear dear words you wrote.
You want people to read what you wrote. It’s THAT important to you or else you wouldn’t bother with this endeavor, yes?
There’s no reason to believe that Doc would want you to fail. So maybe ask him to expand on his comment? You never know, he may have an excellent point. Or some experience you don’t know about.
Good luck, and keep that spellcheck button warm. 😉
Osprey:
You have entirely misread the situation.
If I cared about being widely read I’d actually bother with an edit and I’d post there somewhere I got paid or publish it as a book, as people here have asked me to in the past. There’s way crazier shit pulling down money on Substack, that’s for sure.
And no, I’m not claiming to purely altruistic here. My interest here is like Rocket Raccoon who cares about the galaxy because he’s one of the idiots who lives in it.
That’s the self-serving aspect of this. It’s bourne of the fact that I’ve spent more time than I’d like to think about in exactly the type of shitholes these people want to make this country into.
That’s my angle.
Long story short:
Your adversaries want to put you against the wall and they make no bones about this. They are also light years ahead of you and to say otherwise is a delusional circlejerk.
Their plans are already in motion. It’s a cultural revolution, (or cold civil war, pick your term) Mao style with a some Lenin philosophy to boot and a few modern twists they’ve adapted from what they’ve learned since the 1980’s.
The courts won’t save you. The “Long March Through the Institutions” continues apace. Allowed to continue they will do what they want and courts will rubber stamp it. Boomers will be kulaks, stripped of everything and utterly destroyed. No one will help them and there is a 0.0% chance they’ll be able to save themselves from it. This won’t come as goose stepping jackboots you can shoot. It’s far more insidious.
However, this can be stopped in its tracks if the methodologies behind it are made widely known. This is my goal. Once you see how this works, from the personal level online or in-person to larger versions of the game you will see it, discern the specifics and find it easy to short circuit rather quickly. Where you can’t do it yourself you’ll rapidly find the network to do so.
Much as some might say otherwise, I’ve actually been quite gentle about this stuff for literal years, back to 2017, IIRC.
However, back then I made a grievous error in assuming we had time. Maybe we did then, or maybe I misread the whole thing. Either way, we don’t have that luxury now.
As such, I’m here for a Judges 7 style cream of the crop sort of thing because I honestly rate this particular group of people as highly above average. But even then, some won’t make it in the time allotted and it’s best to cut them loose immediately.
That’s not being mean and it’s not personal. It just is what it is. If you want to help, or offer something more constructive than “TL;DR”, ask questions or maybe think you’ve caught an error, go right ahead.
Other than that, if you can’t be bothered to read a few pages I bang out at 90wpm and give a glance of an edit to then this game’s not for you. It’s that simple. And, at this point, I’m not going to sugarcoat it the way I have in the past.
Proceeding with an investigation against Hunter Biden would be an extremely Career Limiting Move.
Rules for Radicals: Make your opponent adhere to his own words/rules. That would be a good reason to proceed, yes?
I’ve been laid off from jobs. There are worse things that can happen to a working man’s soul.
You cannot hold Hunter accountable because you don’t have the power to do so, the higher-ups will quash any attempts at this, therefore Rule 4 is out the window.
However, Alinsky has something else to tell you, which is that you can use a weak position to act as a provocateur to make the other side look bad when they react to your provocation. In this case that means filing the charges, letting them get quashed and then publicly resigning in protest to draw attention to the superiors’ actions on the case.
This is sometimes called “mid level violence” when taken to the street but the same principles can be applied off the streets. The Left is actually quite adept at using these tactics in a wide variety of situations. You can be too, if you so choose.
Unfortunately, the number of Conservatives who actually put principle (or the country) above themselves is extremely small, especially within the governmental class where they have been actively demoralized for decades.
The Left organizes and produces zealots. The Right’s mostly “busy at work”.
Franklin, supposedly, said “if you can keep it” of the Republic. This is part of what he was speaking about.
I don’t get it. The presupposition of this story is that the US AG will prosecute Hunter. But that scenario is the LEAST likely to occur. It is well established that prosecutors have the discretion NOT to bring charges. This discretion is unfettered. It is inconceivable that the US AG would bring charges against the beloved son of his boss.
So, where is the force – the compelling reason – for anything to come out of this conspicuous and flagrant violation by Hunter?
The only thing I can imagine is that some other plaintiff who is charged with a comparable violation of lying on a 4473 persuades a District judge that it is outrageous for Hunter to be given prosecutorial discretion while he is prosecuted. A District judge sufficiently offended could decide that the law forbidding such a lie (unlawful user of a controlled substance) violates Bruen’s text, history and tradition.
Such a decision by a District judge – by itself – means NOTHING. Nevertheless, it throws the ball into the US AG’s court. He must decide whether to accept the District judge’s decision in that one case; or, take his chances with the applicable Circuit court.
Such a scenario can play out multiple times in multiple District courts in multiple Circuits until – inevitably – there is a Circuit-split. There WILL be a Circuit-split, eventually; provided, only, that the DoJ continues to prosecute cases of unlawful users of controlled substances lying on 4473 forms.
Could the most likely scenario be that the DoJ decides to stop prosecuting unlawful users lying on 4473 forms until the statute of limitations on Hunter runs out? The DoJ simply temporarily suspends its policy of enforcing this law. Much like we have a the DoJ’s temporary suspension of enforcing the Pot prohibition.
Ssshhhhh… Let them have their dreams.
Without hope there can be no true suffering, and they’ve shown they need A LOT of pain and suffering before they change their ways.
You might think that sounds mean but it’s just giving them what they’ve asked for. The fact that they don’t know what they’re asking for being entirely immaterial.
I have *zero* problems treating people out to destroy my country with callous contempt, Stryc. That’s what they want, a smoking hole to rule over.
They would happily do the same to me and you… 🙁
How do you feel about the people “on your side” who fall into the group Maynard would have referred to as “millions of dumbfounded dipshits” simply because they don’t pay attention?
Personally, at this point I consider them commie adjacent and I have little personal problem putting them against the wall right next to the actual commies.
Addicted to or user of– haven’t done cocaine for 3 days.
No lying on the 4473.
finances don’t allow me to be properly addicted to cocain and I don’t like doing things half-assed
I would read more of what you have to say, Strych9. Lay it on me.
Here, have some math, you’ll love it. I’ll repost an edit of it sometime tomorrow of the next day:
====
A couple of things that I’m going to reference back to repeatedly are statistical games being played by propagandists and also the super basics of emotional and associative manipulation. I’ll build off these in the future, but this is the basement floor level of what I’ll be rambling on about repeatedly:
A Very Short Introduction to Statistics for Propagandists:
This isn’t a primer on statistics generally, it only covers a few facets that are most useful to the conversation at hand. Therefore, I’ll skip some of the scary math details and I’m not going to get into the weeds of how specific statistical games are played either.
Also, for the sake of simplicity, I’ve invented a couple of terms here.
Statistical Preconditions for a Takeover:
It has long been known within the discipline known as “Organizational Behavior” that directing a company, NGO, government or group doesn’t require a majority to agree with the direction or position being taken. There are several ways to do this which don’t require a majority and are well known. Capturing leadership requires very few people to agree with you but requires proper targeting of individual people who may or may not be resistant to your plan or infiltration of the organization. Easier to accomplish is to get about 20% of the population to agree with you. Sounds a lot like the Pareto Principle, huh?
Now, provided that your 20% of agitators are intransigent, relatively aggressive in pushing their concepts and kinda mean to those who resist openly, the other 80% of people within the organization will tend to defer to the 20%’s wishes to avoid conflict. This is especially true in workplaces. Other methods commonly deployed on even larger scales, like countries or state-wide elections, tend to produce something like an oddball normal curve with a 30-40-30 distribution. Which, oddly enough, tends to be a good baseline for the political breakdown of the US with a two-party system.
Unfortunately, in this case the 40% who don’t know or care and the 30% who are opposed tend to be ruthlessly demonized because this distribution tends to come from fear-based manipulation tactics, this actually allows for a core cadre of true believers, perhaps as low as 3%, with 27% somewhat adjacent to them for various personal/professional/emotional reasons. This is particularly true of a society with regard to totalitarianism and responses to perceived threats. It is why strongmen and dictators can take over when they do not have anywhere near majority support. See the Red Revolution in Russia for an example of an extreme minority taking over shockingly quickly once in the position to do so.
This is how the Stasi was established, how it maintained control and why it was even more feared than the KGB. The “adjacent” to the “3%” were an army of informers.
[Note: The above plays on group dynamics only. Leadership positions can complicate or uncomplicate the propagandist’s job depending on several factors including the personality of the leader, organizational structure and organizational culture (“corporate culture” as it were). Some leaders will resist, others will fall easily into the 40% that won’t resist. Others will be in the 3-30% that are for whatever this move is. This can be further complicated by incentive structures, which is a topic for another time. We’ll return to this when covering “entryism”, a favorite tactic of the Left for influence injection into various organizations to puppet them for further propaganda purposes.]
Sampling the Fringe for Normalization:
In statistics we can pull a sample from anywhere we like on a normal curve and create a new normal curve from that new sample provided we have enough data points to do it.
In propaganda the specific number of data points isn’t of concern the way it is in hard statistics. With proper media discipline data points can be essentially manufactured. Regardless, the principle is essentially the same.
A selected sample is chosen from the fringe of a population. This group will be selected specifically from an area several standard deviations from the norm and will display a set of characteristics we wish to have become “the norm” for the larger group that makes up the original normal curve. The new “curve” (sample examples) is then presented repeatedly over time via various outlets until it appears normal to the target audience. A new pattern has been created in the minds of audience who will then attempt to extract a meaning from that pattern. They will also, undoubtedly, try to pass on both the pattern and their preferred meaning from it to other people that they know.
If the sample has been carefully curated, which isn’t very hard to do, then the meaning that most people will extract from the pattern is highly predictable. This has several uses but for our purposes this is how you can set groups against each other with ease, especially if they use different media types without much crossover. Gun owning folks don’t watch much of The View, but suburban soccermom types do. Hence it’s a great platform to screech about how the AR-15 is the gun “that’s killing children!” and other such nonsense.
In terms of gun control more generally, talk about a few high-profile mass shootings a lot. Just beat the shit out of that drum for a while, max out the hype. “Waving the bloody shirt” as it were. Keep doing that and you create the illusion that these things happen all the time for most people because most people don’t pay much attention but notice the “din in the background”. Back this with some data you’ve carefully chosen, some wordplay and some “experts” and you will successfully create the impression that the worst kind of mass shootings, and also the rarest, are actually dangerously common.
You have now created a major safety concern in the mind of a portion of the public are now in a position to offer a solution. And remember, you don’t need a majority of people to believe this to make good headway and also remember that some of the people you snare with this will act as your missionaries, carrying the message to other people who trust them. Mary doesn’t pay a lot of attention to the news, but Sheryl sure is freaked out about the massive number of school shootings. Mary’s not sure if that’s true or not, but better safe than sorry and she lies and trusts Sheryl. Mary may even repeat this is a game of telephone that gets blurry very fast.
This accomplishes what I refer to as “injecting something into the zeitgeist”. What solution shall we offer to the anxiety we intentionally manufactured? Obviously, the one we wanted to offer but couldn’t sell to a disinterested Mary and Sheryl before. It could be gun control or you could run in the other direction. What you put through the door you’ve opened is up to the propagandist doing the pushing. It could be a something educational like Nova or Planet Earth. Or it could be outright slander against a religious, political or other minority. What sort of cake comes out of the oven is up to the baker.
Some examples:
The same thing can, and is, used to fuel generational warfare, both sides of the “culture war” and, most obviously if you’re looking, sales of safety equipment.
Or sample the fringe of college kids and you can create the perception that they’re all blue haired commies in gender studies departments. Sample the fringe of retirees and all Boomers become greedy fucks who just want their Social Security, national bankruptcy be damned, hate their own children and don’t give a shit about how they ruined the country.
Do these things enough and the bias on both sides becomes so strong the sides can’t even talk to each other. This little gem of a tactic is fucking everywhere in society these days partly because of rage-bait media strategies.
In this instance, that is sampling the fringe, it’s not about what you want to sell, pick a sale and sell it. It’s how you sell it. Chris Farley shitting in boxes with a guarantee printed on the outside, and then selling them, comes to mind.
Rather surprise that some SS agent hasn’t had an unfortunate, but convenient, negligent discharge. Perhaps they should go for a hike at Ft Marcy Park.
As with anything involving either the Dementiacrat politicians, or their families and close associates nothing, or very little will be done. The DOJ will drag their “Investigation” out long enough to have the statute of limitations expire and the case will be dropped. Unlike the current case against the former President in NY. the Statute timed out a couple years ago and they are still pursuing the case. You can bet if this would have been a prominent Republican or their family the case would have been brought just before the election and used as a cudgel to eliminate them.
Wake me when someone related to or associated with Biden is actually charged and convicted.
Don’t forget those serving (or servicing) in Congress are LEGALLY allowed to participate in insider trading. This is how and why they get so rich.
YEP OUR DOUBLE STANDARDS ,,, ??? DOES ANYBODY HAVE ANY ??? NOT ME …
DON’T DO AS I DO , DO AS I SAY …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu0K9JNwoDU
How Avoiding the Pistol Brace Rule Really Might Be This Easy After All.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGHgtyYa00E
The President of the United States said it best. ”Nobody fucks with a Biden.”
You mean this doddering fool Biden?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueSYtO2G6bU
@strych9
“This has paragraph structure. If you’re not seeing it you must be reading on a phone.”
Actually, no. I have no “texting” capability at all; old line flip phone. I use Hotmail and Yahoo for reading TTAG. What appears on my computer screen is like viewing twitter online: no line break for paragraphs. Just a continuous string of text.
It seems that one is supposed to perceive a dangling line as a para break, which is followed immediately by a new sentence, starting on the next line. Can’t tell the difference between a system-generated break because the string of text is too long for word wrap, or is an actual start of a new para. Simply viewed as a single object, the words just look like a continuous string of letters.
Yes, one can past into a text editor, but that is extra work an author/commenter probably shouldn’t place on every reader. Do the work once for everyone?
As it stands, the majority of what you post is not all that long.
Cheers
@Osprey
In reply to strych9
“Hmmm…Doc isn’t prone to unhelpful advice.”
In this case Doc is entirely unhelpful.
First, he ran across a submission/comment he had no interest in reading simply because Doc thinks it too long to be worth his time. Fine. Doc can think that; no objection here. Doc could have simply ignored the entire submission and moved on; the rest of us would find that of no concern.
Second, Doc is telling 9 how to present his ideas/thoughts/experience.
Third, Doc is being perceived as someone who is more interested in slinging barbs, repeating mantras, sloganeering (all of which not only indicates unseriousness, but contempt for those here who to gain more than unloading worn out platitudes.
BTW, there is an enormous amount of “not worth reading” that is no more than a three-sentence paragraph. I find it no burden to simply delete those comments from my email account; no need to individually convey my disinterest to those.
“Echo Chambers Ain’t Us”
@strych9
“Boomers will be kulaks, stripped of everything and utterly destroyed.”
Think that is what happens to Zeks.
Anyway…..
Some of us boomers saw this coming, long ago. We were on the front line (colleges/universities), and we predicted such as the civil rights movement would turn to reverse racism, leftist professors in colleges would manufacture marxists, right would be wrong, lasciviousness and hedonism would be heralded as freedom and liberty, traditional values would be targeted by society, precious metals would be useless (we learned about the 1933 gold theft).
Must admit, though, the rate of government induced lawlessness has been almost mind-blowing.
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